“Right. Of course. I…” Van der Hoeven scrubbed his hands across his shirt. “I just don’t ever want anything to happen to her.” He took a deep breath and straightened, his hands falling to his side, his shoulders squaring. Becoming-what was the old word? The patroon. The master of the estate. “Right,” he said, more confidently, and left to join Huggins, who was now spreading maps over the table again.
“I have to join them, too,” Clare said. She lowered her voice. “What do you think?”
“I think if I were trying to come up with a hard-to-verify name for someone, I’d pick Michael McWhorter. There are hundreds of McWhorters in Millers Kill, Fort Henry, and Cossayuharie. Thousands, if you include the area between Lake George and Saratoga. The business with the car-I don’t like that, either.”
“You don’t think it could have been an assignation?”
He looked at her skeptically. “Twenty-six-year-old women may do a lot for love, but in my experience, they want to look good while they’re doing it. Would you haul yourself out of bed to rendezvous with your lover at 4:00 A.M.?”
“With messy hair and morning breath and my face all creased from my pillow?” She grinned. “Probably not.” Her smile faded away. “But I’d haul myself out of bed at 4:00 A.M. to do something I didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“Maybe she was counting on getting home before her brother woke up.”
“Eugene told us he had planned to go hunting. He would have been up and out before dawn.”
“Even better. He’s out of the house until ten, eleven o’-clock. That gives her six hours or so to do what she needs to do and get back into the house undetected.”
“If he hadn’t happened to peek in on her before he left this morning, he never would have known she was gone at all.”
“What about the cleaning lady?”
Clare glanced around. “I can’t imagine she’d go in Millie’s bedroom unless she was sure it was empty. And if Millie bumped into her walking in, so what? She says she got up and took a little stroll before breakfast. This house is so big, two people could spend all day in it and never see each other.”
Over her head, Russ could see Huggins staring at them. “Unless the two are you and John Huggins. Better get back to business, darlin’.”
He loved watching her cheeks go pink. Her voice was as steady as ever, though. “He’ll only keep us at it for another hour or two before we get relieved. I’ll be at home after. Give me a call. I want to know what you find out about Michael McWhorter.”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
Her mouth twitched in a half smile before she spun and walked away. He shook himself. He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the keys to his truck. He’d drive over to the department and assign this to someone and then hightail it out of there. It was his day off, after all. Although, they might be stretched thin, what with it being a hunting Saturday and Duane unavailable and Pete on leave. Maybe he’d take care of it himself. Linda’s words came back to him:
Driving up the main road to Haudenosaunee-if two dirt ruts and some gravel could be called a road-felt odd to Becky. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been on the property many times before. As a kid, she would visit her dad as he hauled logs out of the Haudenosaunee woods, sometimes riding behind him in the seat of the skidder, her breath clouding the air, sometimes bouncing in the front seat of the truck as it crunched over the frozen trails toward the main road. Then, as a college student, she had visited the great camp itself as Millie’s guest. They would hike to the waterfall for a swim and then smoke pot in the ruins of the first great camp, the only spot where Millie’s dad was guaranteed not to stumble over them. Summer’s green or winter’s snow, that was her experience of Haudenosaunee, not this gray, splay-limbed November landscape, and never alone.
Around a gentle curve, and she stepped on her brakes, seeing a big red pickup headed straight for her. The truck, driven by an equally big man in hunting camouflage, slowed to a crawl, then nosed its way as far off the road as possible. The driver gestured her to proceed. As she crept past him, he rolled his window down. She stopped and did the same.
“You’re not Millie van der Hoeven, are you?”
One of the search team, then. “I’m afraid not. I’m a friend of hers. She’s still missing?”
He nodded. “Hopefully not for long, though. You say you’re her friend? Has she ever mentioned someone she’s seeing in the area? A boyfriend?”
Becky propped her arm over the edge of the window. “No, she hasn’t.” What a weird thing to ask. Unless-“Does she have one? Do you think she might be with some guy instead of lost in the forest?”
The man nodded. “Maybe. It’s something I’m following up on.” He leaned forward and fired up his truck. “Sorry to bother you. You looked sort of like her picture.”
“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help.” She raised her hand and shifted into gear again. When she was past the truck, she rolled her window up. Looked like Millie. She wished. She supposed that to a guy as old as her dad, any two girls with long blond hair looked alike.
She hoped Millie had an unknown, undisclosed boyfriend. It made more sense than getting lost at Haudenosaunee.
Even this trip to Haudenosaunee was going on faith. If she had had any real doubts about the sale going through, she could have called the contractor and told him to dismiss the crew that would be meeting her at the great camp within the next half hour. She glanced at her car’s clock. Make that twenty minutes. She hadn’t canceled. The planning walkthrough would go on as scheduled. She and the crew would discuss the most economical and efficient way to dismantle all the modern Haudenosaunee buildings.
Then came the hard part of the day. She had to tell her father, as the owner of Castle Logging, that his equipment, which he had garaged over the summer at his most recent cutting site, had to go. The conservancy’s lawyer had asked her to get a detailed inventory, because they would be responsible for any buildings and machinery on the property after the title changed hands. She wasn’t looking forward to getting the document from her dad. As much as she loved Bonnie, she really preferred to stay with her parents when she visited. She wasn’t sure her dad would want to have her in his house after she had hit him up for his inventory and proof of insurance.
But whether or not Dad tossed her out on her ear, by 7:00 P.M. she was headed for the Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort in her party dress and new shoes. And if Millie van der Hoeven hadn’t shown by then, Becky would by- God go out and find her herself. A fierce smile snapped across her face. Her dad always said she was as hard to budge as an old oak tree. It was time to prove him right.
She considered the blankets. Could they be used to attack somehow? To defend? They were too tough to tear. One was heavy wool, almost a horse blanket, the kind you’d use as a topmost layer on a bed because it would make you itch if it was sandwiched between the sheet and the quilt. The other two were more modern, lofty fake- fiber things, soft and warm. They had satin edging. Now those, they might be useful. If she could figure out a way to rip them from the rest of the blanket.
It was funny, really. All those years of trying to shuck off her belongings, trying to find out what was intrinsic to herself instead of what was bought and paid for with her family’s money. As an adult, she had tried to live simply, first from conviction and then from necessity, as her funds dwindled and her support of various organizations grew. If she ignored the fact that she didn’t have to work for a living, that she could stay at her father’s Park Avenue apartment in New York City and at her mother’s Palm Beach cottage in Florida, she could pretend she had the same sort of life as most of her friends.
